Whose Status Is Higher? How and When Dyadic Status Incongruence Influences Team Members' Interactions and Coordination

ABSTRACT A critical challenge for diverse teams is ensuring that members coordinate their work effectively. While research has examined how diversity triggers social categorization that harms coordination, we know little about how the social status attached to these differences influences coordination, especially when members hold different ranks across multiple attributes simultaneously. We introduce a construct called dyadic status incongruence , which occurs when two team members hold conflicting ranks across different status hierarchies (e.g., one has higher education but shorter organizational tenure than the other). Drawing on status inconsistency theory, we argue that this incongruence generates ambiguity and disagreement over who has higher status, which in turn reduces interpersonal liking and ultimately hinders dyadic coordination. We further propose that team specialization mitigates these adverse effects by clarifying task roles and redirecting members' attention from status‐based comparisons to respective expertise for task execution. We tested our hypotheses using round‐robin data from 743 dyads among 221 members in 57 teams at a technology firm, employing polynomial regression, response surface analysis, and social relations modeling. These results were supplemented by a qualitative study using semi‐structured interviews with 15 employees from this firm to provide contextual evidence for the observed effects. Our findings support the proposed model, advancing a more precise, status‐based account of why coordination breaks down in diverse teams and how these effects can be mitigated.